The Girls Recap for Men: A Different Episode

Every week, a man from Esquire will take to The Culture Blog to write about the latest episode of Girls, the endlessly-talked-about and sometimes-watched HBO series created by and starring Lena Dunham. Some will like the show, some will hate it, some somewhere in between, but hopefully there will always be something to learn. Especially for men.

Season 2, Episode 7: "Video Games"

This episode was different. Not Hannah banging Patrick Wilson on the kitchen counter different, but different different. For one thing, Hannah and Jessa are the only two regulars we see. And for another, it takes place well outside the comfortable confines of Brooklyn, two hours north in Garrison, New York where Jessa's father lives. And he seems to be the deadbeat younger brother of William H. Macy in Shameless.

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But despite making the two girls wait at the train station for what seems like hours while we watch Hannah pee behind a powerbox — and wonder why her ass is facing us — Jessa and her dad seem to get along because they're the same type of person: horrible. The two have bad inside jokes and complain about Jessa's new agey step mom Petula, who feeds rabbits and tries to explain to Hannah how life is a video game.

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Petula: "This is all one big simulation. We all need to grow a pair and get to the next level, you know what I mean? If you're not with me you're against me, and I'm going to take you down. Bam bam bam!"

Hannah: "Do you have any scientific evidence that life is just a video game, because I've never though about it and it actually sounds kind of real and stressful."

Petula: "Of course not, because scientists lie."

This exchange is why men are terrified of going home with their girlfriends. Hannah also meets Jessa's maybe step-brother Frank, and compliments the fold in his turtleneck, which he happens to have paired with jean shorts and a mid-90s haircut. But Hannah also seems slightly attracted to him for the strange Josh Hartnett thing he has going on.

"What do you think of Frank?" she asks Jessa as the girls wade through the filth of the guest room, complete with giant hairballs and old porn mags. "I guess I can just never tell if guys are like attractive in a loserly way, or if it's like they're just losers."

Which explains just about every dilemma the women of Girls have with the men in their lives, like Adam and Ray and Charlie and Thomas-John. No matter the conclusion, they're all still losers in some way, even though I'd be friends with Ray. Jessa's conclusion, as she rifles through an old Penthouse and appreciates the unkempt bush, is that it's a woman's duty to turn these losers into men.

Jessa: "These women should be really proud, because in a way the most noble thing you can do is to help a boy find the sexuality. Help a boy become a man, you know?"

Hannah: "Probably the most noble. You know, besides being a doctor. Or a firefighter."

Now we know what Hannah is about to do with her nineteen year old loser pseudo-crush Frank, but only after eating the rabbit she helped feed earlier, and only after Jessa reminds us why she's terrible by fighting with her father, stealing beer, doing Whip-Its with college kids, and covering the eyes of a driver who's speeding down a country road. In Hannah's most adult moment, which I think shows growth after she dumped her feelings on Patrick Wilson two episodes prior, it seems like Hannah is finally done wanting to embrace any and all experiences when she gets out of the car and storms into the woods to cool down. Frank follows her and becomes a man in those woods, albeit after only eight seconds, and albeit in Hannah's thigh crease.

Of course, we learn that it hasn't helped Frank man-up at all, as he cries while walking out of the kitchen the next morning, maybe confused more than ever about his own masculinity and sexuality. I would be, too, Frank.

Meanwhile, Jessa and her father are having it out on the swings outside, and it seems like Lena Dunham is trying to say that for all the ways men need women to become men with their bushy lady parts, father's need to help their daughters grow into women with their love and support. And in that way Jessa's father is the explanation to why she's so horrible.

Jessa: "Why didn't you stand up for me? Why weren't you there? Why can't you do one single thing you say you're going to do? You act like you want me to come see you, but you don't know how to have me here. You don't know how to deal with it. You don't know to even have a conversation with me."

Jessa's Father: "You think I can rely on you?"

Jessa: "You shouldn't have to. I'm the child. I'm the child."

He acts like he's going to change, but he won't. He's a deadbeat, and he leaves them at the market after he says he'll be back in five minutes. He hasn't helped her grow into a woman, and she follows in his footsteps by running away, leaving Hannah at the house having to find her way back to the train station alone as Aimee Mann's "How Am I Different" plays. It's a very self aware choice:

I can't do it, I can't conceive
You're everything you're trying to make me believe
'Cause this show is too well designed
Too well to be held with only me in mind
And how, how am I different?

Hannah calls her parents from the station to say she loves them, because she had something that Jessa never did and is only now realizing it, which shows some more growth. But I'm probably giving the show too much credit, because the episode ends with Hannah peeing behind the powerbox again, grunting from the pain of a urinary tract infection. I miss Ray and Adam.